Can prayer change God's perfect plan?

[Valyza1]

Suppose you had the ability to look back and watch your entire past in as much detail as you want, knowing you can't change it.  Would that make all the multiple choices you made in the past any less free?

No. It wouldn't make a difference whether I looked back into the past or not. Either way I couldn't have done otherwise. Same with the future and the present.

We agree on that point, then.

No, that's what omniscience means.

Yeah, I don't why those two words got mixed up in my head. Apologies.

And we're talking about the future, not the past.

I know that. I was just using the fixed nature of the past as analogous to a hypothetical Divine Point of View of the fixed nature of all time.

Dude... if the future is determined then that means we can't do otherwise in an incompatabilist sense.

Right. I wonder if I'm just going by a different definition of Free Will than most people are over here.

Not sure I understand your objection.  I wasn't talking about Free Will being the cause of suffering, I was talking about it being a reality of human life.  You don't even need to believe in God to believe in Free Will.    But my point was that if you do believe in God or, more topical to this discussion, any omnipotent being, you aren't required to stop believing in Free Will as the two concepts don't, of necessity, contradict each other.   One's will is free in the sense that one has the power to pursue what one wishes. The baby has the power to pursue a piece of candy.  He or she may encounter resistance, but if they want the candy badly enough they can keep pursuing it.  Eventually, the appetite will subside enough for the baby to no longer want to pursue the candy, either because of substitution or exhaustion, but the baby is always free to pursue that candy by whatever tools it has at it's disposal (crawling, crying, reaching, etc). All God's omnipotence means is that He knows what's going to happen. But he's not imposing that knowledge onto the person.  If He didn't know, then the question of why He doesn't intervene would be more pertinent, I should think.  Generally speaking, the only reason to intervene in anything is to either ensure the occurrence of a desired result or prevent the occurrence of an undesired one.   If you already know the result, there's no point in intervening unless you enjoy being part of the process.

You uhhh. You missed my point entirely. I'm talking about, say, still born babies. Or aborted babies. Or babies god commanded have their heads crashed upon the rocks in the Old Testament. I also put in an example of the Eskimo. Someone who would never hear the "good news" or be able to accept Christ's supposed offering. What happens to their free will if they auto go to heaven? Or hell, for that matter?

I have no idea. I have no idea what happens to anyone's Free Will once they die. I don't see what Free Will has to do with someone being religious or not, much less if they ever had a chance to be religious.

I also said that if I were one of those bsbies' spirits and I went automatically to heaven, I'd be amgry for not being able to choose my fate because knowing gods sin of creating an eternal place of torment for those of his creation is plain out evil .

Care to respond to what I said originally l?

I didn't respond to your anecdote about going to heaven because I didn't and still don't see how it's relevant to the discussion.